Whoops. That was the source picture. Here is the actual room. I've modified the graphics to not look so "real". Just about everything in MM is of a cartoony nature so an image like the first one would stick out like a sore thumb.

Joe B

Hey,, I was just talking about how you made that 3D model! Wow, I'm down in the program, I only have Bryce 5 and just normal ol' SoundTrack!    

But I'm not speding 2000 bucks USD to make a good mansion. I'd just stick with free stuff or stuff my dad and brother bought! (My dad bought PhotoShop CS, and he's soon going to get CS3, and my brother got SoundTrack and Bryce 5)  

And.... how do you even get up there to the castle? It's just a background!

I'm not going to use 3D tools. Never was that good at it. I'm sticking at comical stuff!

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As I mentioned being a former consultant I have access to a lot of stuff but with the exception of Photoshop I got most of the software on the list for 30 bucks or less. A good  way to get software cheap or FREE is to be a tester. Heck it's sort of what we do when we test mansions. Another thing to look for is release deals.

Bryce 6.1 - When the people at DAZ bought Bryce they offered it for $6. Jumped right on that.

DAZ Studio - always free

Hexagon 2 - $1.60 recent DAZ Studio users favorite software promotion

Poser 7 - Renderosity web site had a deal on Poser 6 for FREE. Took a couple of weeks to get it downloaded but then did a $29.95 upgrade to 7

Carrara Pro - Got basics on a DAZ deal for $9.99. Got another upgrade deal for $20

Audacity, Rezilla, Soundflowerbed, SoundHack - FREE

I bought my MacBookPro on eBay. It included Final Cut Express, Soundtrack Pro and a bunch of other stuff. Yes I did pay close to 2K for the the Mac but rather than buy it from Apple I looked on ebay and found one that had a software package with it.

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Being a Mac network support technician at J. Walter Thompson (Advertising agency - Ford, General Mills, IBM, etc.),  in NY helped me pick up a lot of graphics tricks from "REAL" artists.

For cartoony stuff like the above graphic, castle was created from Shroom Castle, exported into a Bryce mountain scene. Using PS filters first make 2 copied layers, use the Accented Edges filter on the top level, use Dry Brush on the next level down, change the opacity on the top level until you get the effect you want. Do a Copy Merged, paste into a new document, save as your background jpeg. DAZ also has a renderer (software that does the actual drawing) for cartoon images. For content, a lot of it free, you can go to Content Paradise, Renderosity, 3dCommune or the DAZ forums (HUGE!!).
And of course as time permits forum members are more than welcome to ask for help. I do have a little experience in this.



Off to work, later all,

Joe B

Bryce 6 has a lot of new terrain creation options and the sky-lab has been reworked and is very cool but sometimes confusing with Sun/Moon placement. It also tends to blow up when importing big Lightwave objects with textures. They released 6.1 a couple of weeks ago and it was a major improvement on speed on Intel Macs. The base image above has roughly 5M polygons and took about 4 1/2 minutes to render on my MBP. When I got 6.1 the time dropped to about 80 seconds. Since DAZ bought Bryce they have added much tighter integration with DAZ Studio. Animations from DS are supposed to go right into Bryce. Haven't tried it yet so I'll see but overall I'm pretty pleased with software I got for $6.
FYI, same thing with Poser 7. 6 seemed to be pretty slow on my Mac but ran pretty well on the PC. Now 7 screams on the Mac at about the same speed as the PC. They've added a bunch of new figures mainly to support the new hi-res stuff that's coming out of DAZ and a lot of other places.

That looks cool!